Tis' The Season

Many of you have been asking about the holiday season here in Ethiopia. As we may have mentioned before, Ethiopians follow a very different calendar. If you ask any Ethiopian, it is December 2002. Similarly, Jews have a Jewish calendar, but if you ask any Jew what the date is, they will say that it is December 27, 2009. Ethiopians do not follow the Gregorian calendar and thus celebrate their holidays on different dates.

They celebrated Ethiopian New Year back in September, and Ethiopian Christmas (known as Gu’na) will be celebrated January 7th (December 29th on their calendar). So while most of the world will be counting down the minutes this New Year’ Eve, it will be just another day in Ethiopia. As for Ethiopian Christmas, schools and businesses will be closed from January 6-8 and Christian Ethiopians will be spending those days slaughtering and eating the traditional goat, cow or chicken with their families. Ethiopians don’t exchange gifts, since gift-giving is a Western phenomenon and most Ethiopian families can not afford to buy extraneous items. However, they will be attending church during those days, which means more sleepless nights for us...